The Costume of the Discovered Peoples

There is a great deal of information known about the costume traditions of
many of the ancient cultures. The clothing, hairstyles, and decorative
customs of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, Japan, and other
societies, for example, have all been written about in many books. And
from about midway through the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500
C.E.
) onward there are vast sources of information about the costume worn in
Europe. Artwork, monuments and buildings, and written documents are all
records, which historians call evidence, that help us better understand
different cultures. Yet the knowledge about other cultures that are just
as old and that may once have been just as sophisticated is very limited.
The costume traditions of most of the continent of Africa are little
known, and our knowledge about the traditions of the native peoples of
North, Central, and South America, and of Oceania, is very limited. These
cultures are named the cultures of the "discovered peoples"
because they first became known to Europeans after contact was made within
the last six hundred years.

The age of exploration

As the cultures of Europe grew more sophisticated after the twelfth
century, they developed the ability and the desire to explore the larger
world. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, countries
such as Spain, France, Portugal, and England sent ships across the
oceans to look for new trading routes and establish colonies, or
outposts of the country that had sent them there. This period is known
as the age of exploration. Explorers from these countries traveled
throughout the world. They "discovered" lands that they
had not known to exist, such as the Americas and Oceania, and explored
parts of Africa that had been completely unknown to Europeans before.
These explorers' discoveries provide us with the first
information about the costume traditions of the discovered peoples.

The people who were discovered by the Europeans during the age of
exploration had a long history. Human life is believed to have begun in
Africa about one million years ago, and to have spread from Africa
throughout the world. Humans had begun to settle in North America by
10,000
B.C.E.
or earlier, and they spread from there south into Central and South
America. Humans reached the major islands of Oceania, spanning from
Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south, about the same time,
though they didn't reach the most distant of the islands until
about 1300
C.E.
In places, such as Central and South America, they built large and
well-organized empires of millions; in other places, such as Oceania,
Africa, and North America, humans banded together in small groups or
tribes and had simple social lives based on hunting and gathering. Each
of these cultures undoubtedly had distinct and notable costume
traditions, but we don't possess complete knowledge about the
history of these traditions.

Costume traditions of the discovered peoples

The earliest information that we have about the costume traditions of
the discovered peoples comes from descriptions about them from European
explorers and colonizers. These Europeans, however, did not seek to
preserve, record, or maintain the costume traditions of the people they
discovered. For the most part they believed that Western culture was
superior and that the dress worn by the people they encountered showed
that they were uncivilized, primitive, and barbarian. European contact
led to mass extermination as bloody warfare and disease wiped out a
majority of the native populations. Those who remained were urged to
give up what were considered barbaric costumes and adopt Western dress.
Most did, and thus there were many parts of their own costume tradition
that simply didn't survive.

Native people from the island of Tahiti greeting European
explorers and colonizers.
Reproduced by permission of

European dominance and disregard for the traditions of the discovered
peoples were not the only reasons so many of those traditions have been
lost. Many of the discovered peoples did not possess written languages,
so they left no records that described their dress or decoration
traditions. Many, with the exceptions of the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas,
did not record details of their costume habits in paintings or
sculptures or architectural detail, so there is little physical evidence
of what they wore.

Ancient practices to the present day

Each group of discovered peoples experienced a different path from the
time of discovery to the present. In North America, Native Americans
were slowly overwhelmed by the gradual populating of the continent by
white people; in Africa, the slave trade provided the dominant exposure
to Europeans for many years; in Oceania, contact with Europeans was
irregular and generally peaceful; in Central and South America, the
ancient empires disappeared as
Spain began to conquer the region in the 1500s. As all these cultures
developed, people continued to wear the garments and decorations of
ancient times, but few records were kept about their construction and
their meaning. These cultures thus came into the modern age with a
fragmented costume tradition.

Many of the countries of Africa and Oceania are very poor, and there
simply has never been enough money to conduct archeological research
into the costume traditions of the past. In many of these areas, the
tropical climate tends to erase evidence of the past anyway, so there
may be little to recover. Still, there is some hope that the meaning
locked in the clothing of the past is not lost. Historians and
archeologists, scientists who study the physical remains of past
cultures, are still determined to forge ahead and learn what they can
about the pasts of these cultures.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Flowers, Sarah.
The Age of Exploration.
San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1999.